A cable produced by a device or method for producing an endless winding cable can be used in different types of industry, including but not limited to offshore, mining and heavy lifting and construction. In offshore, such a cable may be used as a mooring line for ships and structures like a floating oil exploration or production facility, or a floating wind turbine. In mining and heavy lifting such a cable may be used as a pendant for a crane. In construction these cables may be used as a tension member in a bridge or a roof.
A cable produced by a device of this type is known from WO-A1-2005/075286, which discloses a cable that is used as a stay for sailing vessels. This document discloses that fibres/fibers of a thermoplastic material are wound around two fastening eyes with their longitudinal direction running parallel to the longitudinal direction of the stay. The wound fibres/fibers form an endless loop, as it were, comprising a first fibre/fiber strand and a second fibre/fiber strand. As it is an endless loop, the first strand and second strand are in fact one and the same, but in a cross section there appear to be two strands, forming a plastic cable. Due to the thermoplastic material used and because the fastening elements have been incorporated in the loop of plastic fibres/fibers, a stay of this type has good strength properties.
A device and method for producing an endless winding cable is known from a video, published by FibreMax on YouTube on 27 Jan. 2015. The video shows a device elongated guide, a carriage, a yarn feeder, a first thimble holder, and a second thimble holder. The thimble holders are connected to the elongated guide at a distance from one another. The carriage is movable along the elongated guide. The yarn feeder is connected to the carriage, and comprises several spool holders for holding a spool, and an output guide for guiding the yarns to the cable during winding. The output guide is movable relative to the first and second thimble holders for guiding the yarns half a turn around the first thimbles during winding.
The concept of endless winding cable, or rope, is also explained on the page Rope of the English version of Wikipedia as follows. ‘Endless winding rope is made by winding single strands of high-performance yarns around two end terminations until the desired break strength or stiffness has been reached. This type of rope (often specified as cable to make the difference between a braided or twined construction) has the advantage of having no construction stretch as is the case with above constructions. Endless winding is pioneered by SmartRigging and FibreMax.’
The known devices and methods for producing an endless winding cable have as a disadvantage that the maximum load of the resulting cable is lower than the sum of the strengths of the individual turns of the yarn.
The invention aims to solve to this problem, or at least to provide an alternative. In particular, the invention aims to provide a device and a method which has an increased break load for the same number of yarn turns.